The number of residents in San Bernardino and Riverside counties eligible for free health care through the Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) grew by 14 percent in 2009, said Dr. Bradley Gilbert, IEHP’s chief executive officer.

It reflects a momentum that began in late 2008, when IEHP started seeing a doubling in the average number of residents qualifying for Medi-Cal coverage on a monthly basis.

The Inland region’s staggering 14-percent unemployment rate, which has fueled the loss of private medical insurance coverage, is attributed to the skyrocketing numbers of those now eligible for Medi-Cal, a state/federal public health program for people living at the poverty level.

From July 2008 to July 2009, the number of Inland Empire residents qualifying for Medi-Cal grew by 10 percent, from about 716,000 to about 787,000, Gilbert said.

In the same timeframe, the number of IEHP members qualifying for Medi-Cal grew by 17 percent, from 294,000 to 344,000, Gilbert said.

For the 2009 calendar year, the number of IEHP members qualifying for free health care grew from about 315,000 in January to about 360,000 in December, a growth of 14 percent, Gilbert said.

“Interestingly, for both periods, I think we grew more than the total number of Medi-Cal recipients (in the Inland Empire),” Gilbert said. “And we’re still growing at 4,000 new members a month.”

It suggests, Gilbert said, that people are losing their access to public insurance and ending up on public programs like Medi-Cal and Healthy Families.

“The good news is they have coverage, but the bad news is how they got there,” Gilbert said.

It’s part of a statewide trend that’s not expected to slow any time soon.

“We understand the economy has had a major impact on this because when people lose their jobs and benefits, they turn to state programs like Medi-Cal and Healthy Families,” said Tony Cava, spokesman for the state Department of Health Care Services.

Last year, about 6.9 million Californians were receiving coverage under the Medi-Cal program. That number is expected to hike up to 7.2 million by the end of the fiscal year on June 30, Cava said.

And while many low income and unemployed Californians are receiving Medi-Cal coverage, the services they are receiving aren’t as broad as they were two years ago.

The passage of the state budget in February saw a $400 million cut to the Medi-Cal program, including the elimination of nine additional benefits at a cost of $110 million. Those benefits included dental coverage and psychiatry, podiatry, acupuncture, speech therapy, chiropractic and optometry services, Cava said.

“We’re finding it difficult to fund the program as it currently stands, let alone fund expansions that would be required if national health care passes in its current form,” Cava said.

In the Inland Empire, the trend shows that more and more families who never had to apply for public assistance before are now doing so due to the flagging economy, Gilbert said.

The Inland Empire’s unemployment rate increased by 4 1/2 percent in 2009, from 9.7 percent in 2008 to 14.2 percent, said economist John Husing, who has studied in the Inland region’s economy for the last 44 years.

But it’s not all bad news, he said.

“We’re hearing some pieces of good news. They’re not things you want to stand on top of the roof and shout about, but we are starting to see some very subtle changes in the economy,” Husing said.

The biggest change, he said, was the bottoming out of the housing market in the second quarter of 2009, which led to an uptick in housing prices.

“We’ve actually started seeing the prices of housing going up every month in the Inland Empire since May,” Husing said. “And the amount of sales has been very strong … the level of affordability is the highest in history.”

In the second quarter of 2009, 68 percent of local families could afford the bottom 50 percent of houses, Husing said.

“The housing markets are finally starting to get cured. It’s going to take a long time, but at least it’s starting,” he said.

In addition, more employment opportunities have surfaced in the Inland empire in the last six months. In October, 4,800 jobs were added. In November, 1,200 jobs were added, Husing said.

“When you look at the 6,000 jobs we added, it was the third largest number of new jobs in the state on a seasonally adjusted basis,” Husing said. “Will that hold? I don’t know. But at least preliminarily it looks like a piece of good news.”

Joe Nelson is an award-winning investigative reporter who has worked for The Sun since November 1999. He started as a crime reporter and went on to cover a variety of beats including courts and the cities of Colton, Highland and Grand Terrace. He has covered San Bernardino County since 2009. Nelson is a graduate of California State University Fullerton. In 2014, he completed a fellowship at Loyola Law School's Journalist Law School program.

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